Missing Pieces
by KrisEleven
Summary: Written for the Goldenlake Fanfiction Olympics. A pre-dedication Frostpine story: Assefa had spent fifteen years looking over his shoulder for the missing piece of himself only to find that it hadn't been missing at all, and he could forgive no more.


A/N This was written for the Goldenlake Fanfiction Olympics, with the prompt 'a long ride home'. If you want to read the other stories posted, or submit some of your own, I will be more than happy to get you the link. This takes place around... 30 years or so before Circle (I think), based on a story he tells Daja in _Daja's Book_, and uses my made-up name for a pre-dedication Frostpine. Assefa is an Ethiopian name, meaning 'the birth has increased our family'. Thank you for reading!

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Assefa still quaked with rage when he thought of them... thought of any of them.

It had been a season since he left his village, almost two since the _mchowni _had died, filling Assefa's veins with fire, nearly killing him, destroying his life. And yet, he lived with the effects every day and he could not – would not – forgive his family for this. Not yet.

He wasn't sure he ever would.

When he had first realized that it wasn't a fever, that the illness that had nearly killed him had been _caused_, he had been confused. His _baba_ had explained what the _mchowni_ had meant to their family... to Assefa. For a time, the betrayal he felt had been tempered in hurt; like hot iron under water, his anger was quenched under the weight of the sadness that overcame him. His entire _life_, he had felt like half a man, like a twin with a still-born brother. He had spent fifteen years looking over his shoulder for the missing piece of himself only to find that it hadn't been missing at all. It had been stolen, sold like goods at market to the highest bidder.

His family had sold it and then watched as he wandered through life lost and they had told him _nothing_. They had reminded him that he ate well while they ate well. They reminded him to be grateful for his new clothes while they, too, wore new clothes. They walked through life fed and wealthy and _whole_ and told him to stop looking over his shoulder because there was nothing to see, when all along they had _known_.

As a family they had risen, but only Assefa had sacrificed anything at all.

He may have pushed his anger down, in time, forgotten the pain and fear caused by his magic returning. Forgot all the years he had ran through his village, trying to escape the emptiness and watchful eyes, to find the missing piece of himself that he couldn't describe, let alone find... but then it took the forge away from him, too.

He had tried to hope, for a small time, that getting it back was the same as never having it stolen, but though they were meant to be together, he and his magic were strangers. He walked into Nahvlee's forge, and everything was destroyed at his hand. The old blacksmith had always treated him like a son, but everything Assefa touched _melted_, and he didn't know how to stop it. If he was allowed to stay, he would burn the forge to the ground, and they both knew it.

Nahvlee had pressed a pouch of coins into his hands and told him not to come back. Assefa could forgive no more. He walked home and _demanded_ a reason why.

Assefa had lost everything and they sat in their new clothes, with meat on the table and a servant in the fields and told him that _he_ had gained, too.

He had looked to the floor, to avoid their eyes. They had used to look at him with exasperation, that he couldn't just let go of his anger and his confusion and be content, as they all were. If Assefa had looked into their eyes and seen that exasperation, after learning all he had learned, after losing all he had lost, he would have burned the house down around their ears. He would have razed the village to the ground and _laughed_.

Instead, Assefa had turned away and left his house. Standing outside in the hot night air, he looked around and realized that he was just as lost as he had always been. Like he had so many nights before, he had stepped away from his door and begun to run, toward what he had lost, away from the emptiness his family's betrayal opened up in him. But this night he didn't stop running until his lungs were fit to burst and then he fell in the grass and screamed his years of frustration and anger and loss until he put his head in his hands and wept tears that steamed like the slack tub.

Once he had regained his breath, he stood and kept walking into the night, away from his village. Within two days he was the furthest he had ever been from home. He had the money Nahvlee had pressed into his hand and bought an old mare in the market town of Masego. He stood at a crossroads in an unfamiliar town and chose north not because he had any destination in mind, but because he knew it was the way to get furthest from everything. Assefa didn't know where he was going – didn't know a single soul outside of his village – but he was too angry to turn back and so he rode on.

He had stopped looking over his shoulder; there was nothing there to see.

Eventually he would master his magic. Eventually, he would learn who he was. Eventually he would have people he loved and trusted, people who would become the family he deserved. The night he changes his name to Frostpine, he will look around at the people who surround him and realize that he had been whole for a long time.

But that was a long way from the angry teenager riding in the sun along a road unknown. It would be ten years before he made it to the gates of Winding Circle temple, a place he had never even heard of when he rode north from Masego.

For now, for a long time to come, Assefa rides on his long road home, looking ahead for the missing pieces of himself.


End file.
